As the Government prepares for the 2025/26 budget season, cost savings through improved efficiencies and innovation are expected to prominently feature across the Public Service.
In an exercise that was first piloted in selected national and provincial departments since 2015, the Department of Public Service and Administration and the State Information Technology Agency (SITA) are slowly migrating the paper-based payslips of the country’s 1, 2 million public servants to electronic Payslips, or ePayslips.
According to SITA’s 2016/17 annual report, some 20 national and 30 provincial departments who were early adopters of the Electronic Document Delivery (EDD) Service initiative saved a combined R30 million annually. Moreover, foregoing the printing of hundreds of tonnes of salary slips has had enormous environmental benefits.
As an example of processes innovation, the EDD Service generally enables effective business operations and ensures the reduction of the large volumes of paper that is associated with government work.
As of January 2025, the EDD Service was live in 123 out of 165 national and provincial departments, with 10 at an implementation phase and 3 in the process of contracting SITA for the service, according to SITA. The budget items referred to as printing, glue folding and distribution in the departments that have gone live have seen 81,2 % in cost reductions from the nearly R50 million annualised costs baseline.
Apart from being used for the PERSAL-linked ePayslips, 110 departments have adopted the EDD Service in the creation and distribution of the 2023/2024 Tax Year IRP5 to employees, among other document management requirements.
The ICT agency says its EDD Service offers a secure and cost-effective method of preparing, formatting, and printing source data. This includes features such as document uploading and transmission, online storage, archiving as well as enabling employees to access information from any internet-connected device. Moreover, SITA’s EDD Service ensures compliance with government laws and industry standards for document handling and storage. The service also provides detailed tracking and reporting capabilities for all documents transmitted.
